Hermione Granger and the Lightning Thief
by ClaraOswald4Eva
Summary: Book 1. Hermione Granger and her best friend, Percy Jackson, were normal - until they accidentally vaporised their teacher. Now their lives have been turned upside down, they've been carted off to summer camp, monsters are trying to kill them, and they have until June 21 to find the Lightning Bolt, whilst Hermione tries to figure out how some people at camp already know who she is.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello everyone! Welcome to my new fan fiction. If you hadn't already guessed, this is a Percy Jackson and Harry Potter crossover. At first, it may seem exactly the same as the books - but I promise you that I have added A LOT to most of the other chapters. You'll first notice the differences at around Chapter Five. It also may not seem very Harry Potter-like, but I assure you that it will be (especially in Book Two).**

**This book is the first in a series of TWENTY! I know, right? I will have absolutely no social life by the time I'm finished. I will be publishing this on both Wattpad and FanFiction, so feel free to check out either one!**

**Also, I am English, so I might've got a few things wrong. Sorry about that! I have used English spelling, but I got the book off an American website, so there will probably be a mix.**

**I don't want anyone to complain at the end of this chapter, so I'll just explain now: Hermione will seem EXTREMELY out of character (OOC) for the entirety of this book - aka she won't be very smart or interested in studying. But I assure that this will be explained...in the next book.**

**I will be updating twice a week, every Wednesday and Saturday from today (January 1st) to Saturday 15th March. If I miss an update, you have every right to yell at me!**

**Please, if you find any mistakes (even little ones like spelling or tense) TELL ME in a comment!**

**That's it from me! If you like this story, please feel free to comment, vote, add it to your library!**

**-Rebecca**

**PS: Enjoy!**

**ϟ ϟ ϟ**

_ **Hermione Granger and the Lightning Thief**_

_**Chapter One: We Accidentally Vaporise Our Maths Teacher**_

_**Chapter Dedication: **__**demonpoxingdiangelo for having faith in me to finish this story, and for begging me to publish it...every day for the last two months :D**_

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.

If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now, Believe whatever lie your Mum or Dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.

If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

But if you recognise yourself in these pages – if you feel something stirring inside – stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before _they_ sense it too, and they'll come for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Hermione Granger.

I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.

Am I a troubled kid?

Yeah. You could say that.

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our year seven (sixth-grade) class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman artifacts.

I know — it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.

Mr Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorised wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armour and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

Boy, was I wrong.

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my year six (fifth-grade) school, back when I still lived in England, when we went to the Edgehill battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school coach, but of course I got expelled anyway.

And before that, at my year five (fourth-grade) school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Sea World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that...well, you get the idea.

This trip, I was determined to be good.

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Grover was an easy target.

He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only year seven with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.

He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

My other best friend, Percy Jackson, couldn't do anything either. He was on probabtion like me. Percy was practically the opposite of Grover. He was about my height, with black hair, and sea green eyes a bit like mine. He acted 'cool', and got into just as much trouble as me. No matter what had happened, we were always the ones held at fault.

"I'm going to kill her," Percy mumbled.

Grover tried to calm him down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

I snorted as he dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.

"That's it." Percy started to get up, but I pulled him back to his seat, even though I was resisting the urge to do the same.

"We're already on probation," I reminded him. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

Looking back on it, I wish I'd helped him deck Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess we were about to get ourselves into.

Mr Brunner led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a _stele, _for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was really interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs Dodds, would give me the evil eye.

Mrs Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured that the three of us - Percy, Grover and I - were devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.

One time, after she'd made Percy and me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, Percy told Grover and me he didn't think Mrs Dodds was human. Grover looked at him, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."

Mr Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you _shut up_?" at the same time as Percy.

It came out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Mr Jackson, Miss Granger," he said, "did you have a comment?"

My face was bright red. I said, "No, sir." as Percy shook his head mutely.

Mr Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele.

"Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I recognised it. "That's Kronos eating his kids-" Percy began.

"-and Kronos was the king Titan, and he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods." I continued.

"So, um, Kronos ate them, right?"

I nodded. "But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead."

"And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos-"

"-Into throwing up his brothers and sisters—"

"Eeew!" one of the girls behind me interrupted.

"-And so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," Percy continued.

"-And the gods won." I finished.

There were some snickers from the group.

Behind us, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"

"And why, Mr Jackson and Miss Granger," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover muttered.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.

At least Nancy got told off, too. Mr Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Mr Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Miss Granger, Mr Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.

Grover, Percy and I were about to follow when Mr Brunner said, "Mr Jackson, Miss Granger."

I knew that was coming.

We told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr Brunner. "Sir?"

Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"You both must learn the answer to my question," Mr Brunner told us.

"About the Titans?" Percy asked.

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson and Hermione Granger."

I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armour and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever _lived, _and their mother, and what god they worshipped.

But Mr Brunner expected us to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that we both have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, and I had never made above a C- in my life. No — he didn't expect us to be _as good; _he expected us to be _better. _It was hard enough trying to learn all those names and facts; there was no way in hell that I could spell them correctly.

I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He told us to go outside and eat our lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Grover, Percy and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from _that _school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," Percy said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off us sometimes. I mean, we're not geniuses. Or genii?"

I punched him lightly in the arm.

Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give us some deep philosophical comment to make us feel better, he said, "Can I have your apples?"

I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it. So did Percy.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my Mum and Dad's flat, only a little way uptown from where we sat. We lived in the same block of flats as Percy. Neither of us had seen our parents since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. They'd hug me and be glad to see me, but they'd be disappointed, too.

They'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look they'd give me.

Mr Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.

"Times like this, I miss England's weather." I sighed.

"I thought England was where it rains about every five seconds?" Percy asked, confused.

"Not in the summer, dummy. In the summer, we had temperatures of up to thirty seven degrees Celsius. Here, we're meant to have even hotter. Instead, at the end of spring, we're in the teens."

"I will never understand the conversion of Fahrenheit and Celsius." I opened my mouth to tell him - my parents had grilled me about all the differences between American English and British English before we'd moved - but he put his hand over it. "Don't need to know, Mione." he laughed. I put a hand over my heart in mock hurt.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of us with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

I tried to stay cool. The school counsellor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy and Hermione pushed me!"

Mrs Dodds materialised next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"

"—the water—"

"—like it grabbed her—"

I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that we were in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs Dodds turned on us. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if we'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honeys—"

"I know," Percy grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks." I groaned internally and stood on his foot. If there's one thing I'd learned, its that you never, _ever_, guess your punishment.

Apparently, Mrs Dodds agreed with me.

"Come with me," she said, not taking her eyes off us.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. _I _pushed her."

I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for us. Mrs Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr Underwood," she said.

"But—"

"You—_will_—stay—here."

Grover looked at us desperately.

"It's okay, Grover," Percy told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Honeys," Mrs Dodds barked at us. "_Now_."

Nancy Bobofit smirked.

I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.

Then I turned to face Mrs Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at us to come on.

How did she get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counsellor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure.

I shared a glance with Percy, and could see he was thinking the same thing.

We went after Mrs Dodds.

Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, his eyes flicking between us and Mr Brunner, like he wanted Mr Brunner to notice what was going on, but our Latin teacher was absorbed in his novel.

I looked back up. Mrs Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I thought. She's going to make us buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.

But apparently that wasn't the plan.

We followed her deeper into the museum. The further in we went, the more my feeling of uneasiness grew. When we finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mrs Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...

"You've been giving us problems, honeys," she said.

I did the safe thing. We both said, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

_She's a teacher_, I thought nervously._ It's not like she's going to hurt us_.

Taking the safe option again, we both stayed quiet.

Thunder shook the building.

"We are not fools, Hermione Granger and Percy Jackson," Mrs Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

I didn't know what she was talking about.

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stashes of sweets we'd both been selling out of our dorm room. Or maybe they'd realised we'd got our essays on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away our grades. Or worse, they were going to make us read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, I don't..."

"Your time is up," she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice us to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding two pens in his hand.

"What ho!" he shouted, and tossed the pens through the air.

Mrs Dodds lunged at us.

With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched one of the two ballpoint pens out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Mrs Dodds spun towards us with a murderous look in her eyes. Percy was beside me, gripping a second sword, exactly the same as the one I held.

My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the sword.

She snarled, "Die, honeys!"

And she flew straight at us.

Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.

Two metal blades hit her on alternate shoulders and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. _Hisss!_

Mrs Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporised on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching us.

We were alone.

There were ballpoint pens in our hands.

Mr Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but us.

My hands were still trembling. Maybe our lunches had been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.

"What just happened?" I gasped, sitting down on the floor as my knees gave way suddenly.

"Your guess is just as good as mine." Percy told me, collapsing in front of me.

I stared at the ballpoint pen. Had that really just happened? Had we just imagined it? The fact that we both seemed to think the same thing had happened seemed to count against that idea.

"Lets go talk to Mr Brunner." I decided. "He gave us the pens - I mean swords. No, I mean can tell us what's going on." Percy nodded, and we went back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw us, she said, "I hope Mrs Kerr whipped your butts."

I shared a look with Percy. "Who?" he said.

"Our _teacher._ Duh!"

I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.

She just rolled her eyes and turned away.

We asked Grover where Mrs Dodds was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at either of us, so I thought he was messing with us.

"Not funny, man," Percy told him.

"This is serious." I agreed.

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.

I nudged Percy, and we went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, those would be my pens. Please bring your own writing utensils in the future, Miss Granger, Mr Jackson."

I handed Mr Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realised I was still holding it.

"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs Dodds?"

He stared at me blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs Dodds. The maths teacher." He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Hermione, there is no Mrs Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Hi guys! Thanks for all the positive feedback (mainly on FanFiction) and to everyone who read the first chapter. This chapter is basically the same as the original from the book, but there is one vital difference near the end. I'll leave you guys to figure out what I'm talking about. As always, please vote, comment, favourite, etc. And no matter how small it may be, please tell me about any mistakes I make!  
**

**-Rebecca**

**PS: Enjoy!**

**ϟ ϟ ϟ**

_**Hermione Granger and the Lightning Thief**_

_**Chapter Two: Three Old Ladies Knit The Socks Of Death**_

**_Chapter Dedication: SquirrelDinosaur for her great review and support!_**

I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly.

This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on Percy and me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs Kerr — a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip — had been our maths teacher since Christmas.

Every so often I would spring a Mrs Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.

It got so I almost believed them — Mrs Dodds had never existed.

Almost.

But two things stopped me - one: the fact that Percy remembered the same as me. Two: Grover couldn't fool me.

When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, and then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.

Something was going on. Something _had _happened at the museum.

I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.

The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.

I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs.

I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.

Finally, when our French teacher, Mr Fauvé, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for vocab tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I didn't know what it meant, but it made me feel a little better.

The headmaster sent my parents a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.

Fine, I told myself. Just fine.

I was homesick.

I wanted to be with my Mum and Dad in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with Percy's obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties next door.

Besides, I wasn't the only one being expelled - Percy was being kicked out for the same reasons. We were both the only ones who knew Mrs Dodds had existed, had exploded into yellow dust. The fact that someone else knew stopped me from going utterly insane.

And yet...there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods outside my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been my first real friend, even if he was a little strange.

I worried how he'd survive next year without us.

I'd miss Latin class, too — Mr Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.

As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for. I hadn't forgotten what Mr Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me and Percy. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.

The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the _Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology _across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.

I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.

I remembered Mr Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. _I will accept only the best from you, Hermione Granger._

I took a deep breath. I picked up the Latin textbook.

I'd asked lots of teachers for help before, but I'd never been so nervous about it. Maybe if I talked to Mr Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologise for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.

I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.

I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said, _"..._worried about Percy and Hermione, sir."

I froze.

I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.

I inched closer.

Suddenly, someone clamped their hand over my mouth. I tried to scream, but the person whipped me round, and I let out a gasp of relief. It was Percy.

"Don't get any closer." he whispered. "They'll see you."

"How long have you been here?" I mouthed. He shrugged, and offered up his own copy of _Cambridge Guide To Greek Mythology _as an explanation. I rolled my eyes and turned back to listen to Grover and Mr Brunner, Percy by my side.

"...alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the _school_! Now that we know for sure, and _they _know too—"

"We would only make matters worse by rushing them," Mr Brunner said. "We need the two to mature more."

"But they may not have time. The summer solstice dead line-_"_

"Will have to be resolved without them, Grover. Let them enjoy their ignorance while they still can."

"Sir, they _saw _her..."

"Their imagination," Mr Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince them of that."

"Sir, I...I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."

"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy and Hermione alive until next fall—"

Two textbooks dropped to the ground and hit the floor with a thud.

Mr Brunner went silent.

My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall, Percy following quickly.

A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.

Percy opened the nearest door and we slipped inside.

A few seconds later I heard a slow _clop-clop-clop, _like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside our door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.

A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.

Somewhere in the hallway, Mr Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."

"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn..."

"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."

"Don't remind me."

The lights went out in Mr Brunner's office.

We waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.

Finally, we slipped out into the hallway and made our way back up to the dorms. Wordlessly, we split up at the two way staircase towards the girls' and boys' rooms in silent agreement to talk later.

Luckily, everyone in my dorm was asleep, so I slipped into my bed without being noticed.

The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam with Percy, my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr Brunner called us back inside.

For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about our eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Percy, Hermione," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's...it's for the best."

His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.

I mumbled, "Okay, sir."

"I mean..." Mr Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you two. It was only a matter of time."

My eyes stung.

Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.

"Right," I said, trembling.

"No, no," Mr Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say...you're not normal, you two. That's nothing to be—"

"Thanks," Percy blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding us."

"Wait—"

But we were already gone.

On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.

The other girls were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were _rich _juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.

They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.

What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the autumn.

"Oh," one of the girls said. "That's cool."

They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.

The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as Percy and I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.

During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.

Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. I was about to open my mouth and ask what was wrong, when Percy asked, "Looking for Kindly Ones?" I face-palmed. Whatever a Kindly One was, it obviously scared the hell out of our best friend.

Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"

I confessed about us eavesdropping on him and Mr Brunner the night before the exam.

Grover's eye twitched. "How much _did _you hear?"

"Oh...not much." Percy said nonchalantly.

"What's the summer solstice dead-line?" I asked eagerly, and it was Percy's turn to face-palm.

He winced. "Look, guys...I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers…"

"Grover—"

"And I was telling Mr Brunner that maybe you two were over-stressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs Dodds, and..."

"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."

His ears turned pink.

From his shirt pocket, he fished out a pair of grubby business cards. "Just take these, okay? In case you need me this summer."

The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:

_Grover Underwood  
__Keeper  
__Half-Blood Hill  
__Long Island, New York  
__(800)_ _009-0009_

"What's Half—"

"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um...summer address."

My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. As rude as it sounded, I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.

"Okay," I said glumly.

"So, like, if we want to come visit your mansion." Percy commented just as glumly, like he was thinking the same thing as me.

However, Grover just nodded. "Or...or if you need me."

"Why would we need you?" we asked simultaneously.

It came out harsher than I meant it to.

Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Hermione, Percy, the truth is, I-I kind of have to protect you."

I stared at him.

All year long, we'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without us.

And here he was acting like he was the one who defended _us._

"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting us from?"

There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover, Percy and I filed outside with everybody else.

We were on a stretch of country road — no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars.

On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice_. _There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.

I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but the two pieces of garment were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue and emerald-green yarn.

All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.

The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at us.

I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.

"Grover?" I asked worriedly.

Percy looked over and noticed our friend's queer mood. "Hey, man—"

"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"

"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"

"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."

The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears.

I heard Grover catch his breath.

"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."

"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."

"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back. So did Percy.

Across the road, the old ladies were still watching us. The middle one cut the two yarns, and I swear I could hear those twin _snips _across four lanes of traffic.

Her two friends balled up the electric-blue and emerald-green socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for — Sasquatch or Godzilla.

At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.

The passengers cheered.

"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"

Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.

Percy kept looking out of the window distractedly, and his face was really pale. Glancing out at where he was looking, I saw that the ladies, the socks, the fruit stand - all of it - had disappeared.

Grover didn't look any better than either of us. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.

"Grover?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you not telling us?"

He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "What did you see back at the fruit stand?"

"You mean the old ladies?" I asked.

"What is it about them, man?" Percy wondered. Then he gulped apprehensively. "They're not like..." he couldn't seem to finish the sentence.

I shivered. "They're not like Mrs Dodds, are they?"

His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs Dodds.

"Just tell me what you saw." he said shakily.

"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."

He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost — older.

He said, "You saw her snip the cord."

"Yeah. So?" But even as Percy said it, I knew it was a big deal.

"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."

"What last time?" I asked. My heart had jumped right up into my throat.

"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."

"Grover," I said slowly, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"

"Let me walk you guys home from the bus station. Promise me."

This seemed like a strange request to me, but we both promised he could.

"Is this like a superstition or something?" Percy asked.

No answer.

Something dawned on me, and my heart seemed to reach up to my mouth. "Grover — that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"

He looked at us mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers we'd like best on our coffins.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hi guys!**

**First of all, I am SO sorry about not updating yesterday. I had the chapter ready, but I wasn't allowed on my laptop until I finished my homework, and by the time it was done I had to go to bed. But you don't want to hear my excuses!**

**This chapter is quite different to the book in a few ways. You'll know it when you see it. However, I had real trouble with this chapter's plot. If anyone has any improvement ideas, please tell me! And if you see any mistakes, tell me too!  
**

**As always, comment, vote, follow, etc!**

**-Rebecca**

**PS: Enjoy, and thank you so much for the fifteen follows, seven favourites and four reviews on this story, and the follows and favourites of me! You have no idea how much it means to me!**

**ϟ ϟ ϟ**

_**Hermione Granger and the Lightning Thief**_

_**Chapter Three: Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Trousers**_

_**Chapter Dedication: griffindork93 for both of their really nice reviews!**_

Confession time: we ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.

I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking both me and Percy out, looking at us like we were dead people walking, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to be sixth grade?"

Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made us promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom.

Instead of waiting, we got our suitcases, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.

"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.

A word about my parents, before you meet them.

Their names are Dan and Jean Granger and they're the best person in the world, except maybe Percy's mother, Sally Jackson, which just proves my theory that the best people have completely screwed up lives.

They were childhood friends with Sally, born in the USA, but all three of them moved to England at the age of three, at the same time. Two years later, all six of their parents were going back to America to see some friends. The plane crashed, and there were no survivors. The three of them were taken in raised by Sally's uncle, as they refused to be separated, but he didn't care much about any of them. Sally wanted to be a novelist, my parents wanted to be dentists, so they spent secondary school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing or doctors' program. Then the uncle got cancer, and Sally, being the oldest by a few months, opted to quit school in their senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma, whilst my parents managed their degrees. Sally moved back to America when they were all twenty-three, and they'd lost contact, whilst my parents - who had been childhood sweethearts - got married. Only ages later - in fact, only a year ago, when we moved in next door, did they see each other again.

So, basically, all three had messed up lives, but Percy's mum more than most. The only good break she ever got was meeting Percy's dad.

Percy had told me he didn't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. His mum doesn't like to talk about him because it makes her sad. She had no pictures. Apparently, they weren't married. Percy told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.

Lost at sea, Sally had told him. Not dead. Lost at sea. It was kind of romantic, if you thought about it.

A few years before we'd moved to the States, Percy had got a new step-dad, Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds they knew him, then showed his true colours as a world-class jerk. Percy had nicknamed him Smelly Gabe. Which fitted him absolutely perfectly. The guy reeked like mouldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts, and you could smell his stench from my house next door, and hear his poker parties late into the night. During the summer and Christmas holidays I had to settle myself in, but I often ended up sitting out on the balcony with a blanket, talking with Percy late into the night.

When we got back to our block of flats and took the lift up to the middle floor, we went to my flat first, trying to avoid Smelly Gabe for as long as possible.

I unlocked the green painted door to flat number seven. The lights inside were off, and the air was cold, even though it was the middle of summer. I walked into the little flat, hoping my mum or dad would be home from work. Instead, they were still at the dentistry, probably getting excited over a loose brace or an unblockable decay, or a fallen-out filling.

Percy came in after me, flicking on various lights to the kitchenette/ dining room/ living room. He may not look like it, but Percy was an amazing cook, so he began to pull ingredients out of the cupboards whilst I went through the mail.

All the letters to me were piled on my bed in my room, which was neat but untouched since Christmas. A thin layer of dust had settled on top of most of my stuff.

I flicked through my letters, not that there was much to be interested about. A postcard from a friend at my old school, my only friend before Percy and Grover. She was getting on great without me though, so I ignored that one pretty quickly. A note from my mum, telling me to help myself to food until she and my dad got home. I was about to throw it all in the bin and go help Percy when I noticed a piece of paper sitting on the bed.

I could've sworn it wasn't there when I came in.

It was written on thick expensive creamy parchment, in loopy, slanting writing which gave me a headache. The ink changed colour through the words, the first being red, the last pink.

Eventually, struggling through, I managed to work out it said something like:

_Dear Hermione Granger,_

_I'm sorry that I have to write this letter to you, but it seems important that I warn you._

_Everything is about to change. Brace yourself. You will know when it happens. When it does, give this letter to the horseman. He will show you the way. _

_Sincerely,_

_Lady Alkmene Trivia_

I stared at the letter, reading it over and over again to make sure my dyslexia wasn't just acting up. But no, unfortunately, I seemed to have read it correctly. Which didn't give me any reassurance. It didn't make any sense. What was going to happen? And who was the horseman?

Shaking my head, I went back to the kitchen.

"Grub's up!" Percy called, setting a hot pan of spaghetti hoops on a mat on the table, along with a plate of toast and a bowl of grated cheese. I smiled inwardly - this was one of my favourite meals. However, just to add a typical Percy twist to it, he'd poured blue food colouring into the spaghetti sauce. He had this strange obsession with blue food, just like I did with the colour green. Only his mum actually humoured him, so most of the food he ate was blue. Blue sweets, blue crisps, blue spaghetti.

He sat down opposite me and served the food. He began to eat, but I simply stared out of the window, watching the traffic below as it rushed by.

Suddenly the letter was snatched out of my hand. "Hey!" I yelled, trying to take it off Percy, but he gripped it firmly and forced me to sit again. He glanced at it, and quickly gave up. I smirked.

"What does it say?" he sighed.

I reread the words, which I had quickly committed to memory so I wouldn't have to struggle through them again. He frowned as I finished, wondering the same thing as me.

"Maybe it has something to do with Mrs Dodds." he said quietly. I nodded slowly, but couldn't be bothered to think anymore about it. I was so tired of everything. The hallucination which I knew was real, almost dying, Grover's weird behaviour, the old ladies with yarn, and now this stupid letter.

We finished our meal in silence.

I left the plates in a tub of soapy water and shouldered my bag. Percy grimaced and followed me and we went out of my flat, over to his. He undid the locks as slowly as he could while I tapped my foot. The door opened and an almost tangible odour drifted out. It smelled of cigars and beer and mouldy pizza, just like Smelly Gabe. I shivered as I wondered at the state of Percy's bedroom, which served as Gabe's 'study' during school months. We braced ourselves and walked in, through the rubbish and detritus which was almost ankle deep. I gagged.

I hoped that Sally was home from working at the sweet shop downtown. Instead we were greeted by one of Gabe's poker parties.

Gabe sat at the head of the table. Hardly looking up, and not noticing me, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."

"Where's my mom?" Percy demanded.

"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"

That was it. No _Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?_

I tried to think of a reason why Sally would marry such a disgusting, ungrateful man.

Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tusk less walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.

He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting pay cheques, making practically everyone in a five mile radius feel nauseous and spending money on cigars and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever we were home, he expected Percy to provide his gambling funds. He called that their "guy secret." Meaning, if he told his mum, Gabe would punch his lights out.

Ever since I'd got Percy to admit that, we'd come up with a strategy which had, at least, worked the last time, when we came home for Christmas.

"I don't have any cash," Percy told him.

He raised a greasy eyebrow.

Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.

"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"

Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."

"Am I _right_?_" _Gabe repeated.

Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.

"Hermione paid," Percy said. "And we went to her house first, so don't think you can bully her into giving you money either because she hasn't got any with her."

We began to leave the room.

"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after us. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"

Percy slammed the door to his room after I came in. I shuddered. The only thing Gabe studied here was old car magazines, but he loved shoving Percy's stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on the windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.

Percy dropped his suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.

Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs Dodds, or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.

But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I sat down beside Percy, and could tell he was thinking the same.

I remembered Grover's look of panic — how he'd made us promise we wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone — something — was looking for us right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.

Then I heard Sally's voice. "Percy?"

She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted. She had that sort of aura that can make you feel good when she just walks into the room.

Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few grey streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but no one ever thinks of her as old. When she looks at you, it's like she's seeing all the good things about you, none of the bad.

I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even Percy or Gabe.

"Hermione! I thought you'd be over here." She hugged me tight, which you would think was awkward, but it really wasn't. For one, you got used to it. She made anyone happy, no matter what she did. Then she turned to Percy and hugged him too. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"

Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the sweet shop in Grand Central. She'd brought us both a huge bag of 'free samples', the way she always did when we came home. And, of course, she'd humoured us both: green sweets for me, blue for Percy.

I could see that they wanted to be left alone, so I thanked Sally quickly and waved at Percy, promising to meet him on the balcony.

When I got back to my house, the door was on the latch and the lights had been turned on. My smile widened in anticipation and, nose wrinkled at Smelly Gabe's stench which still lingered, I went in.

Almost immediately, I was attacked by Hurricane Jean - a.k.a. my mum.

She squeezed me so tightly that I couldn't breathe. My mum was always this strangely enthusiastic and optimistic, no matter what was going on. She had long mousey brown hair, which she always kept in a messy ponytail. There were always strands hanging beside her face, framing her soft grey eyes. I got my eyes from her grandmother, apparently. My dad, on the other hand, had bright blue eyes. I got my caramel-brown hair from him - although the ridiculous frizz was just my own personal quirk. Along with the buck-teeth.

Once I managed to pry my mother off me, I went to my room, both of my parents following me.

We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked some green apple sour strings from my bag, my mother ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. Neither of them mentioned anything about my getting expelled. They didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was their little girl doing all right?

I told my mum she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see them both.

My dad was a lot more laid back than my mum, so didn't try to kill me with adoration the moment I stepped over the threshold.

From through the wall, I heard Gabe yell, "Hey, Sally — how about some bean dip, huh?"

I gritted my teeth. So did my parents.

Percy's mum is one of the nicest ladies in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.

I shook myself and continued to describe my year. For their sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told them I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself.

I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.

Until that trip to the museum...

"What?" my dad asked, sitting forwards. His eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"

"No, Dad."

I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell them both about Mrs Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.

My mum pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.

"We have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."

My eyes widened. "Where?"

"Montauk." my dad replied. "Three nights."

"When?"

They smiled. "As soon as Percy and Sally are ready."

My mouth dropped open.

"We're going with Percy?" I almost screamed in delight. They nodded, my dad smirking. I squealed - which was completely uncharacteristic - and hugged them both.

I couldn't believe it. My parents and I hadn't been on holiday in ages, since we didn't have enough money.

"We'll be staying in the same cabin together." my dad informed me. "When we get there you can tell us about...whatever you've forgotten to tell us. 'Kay?" For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in his eyes — the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride — as if my dad too felt an odd chill in the air.

Then his smile returned and I thought I must've imagined it.

My parents left me to my thoughts. I practically danced around my room. When I finally sat down, my mood calming, my mind drifted back to Grover. Something had really panicked him. Something in his voice when he talked about Mrs Dodds, the look on his face when he saw the old ladies, made me think twice. What had we been _thinking_? Why had we ditched Grover?

I bit my lip, and felt around in my jacket pocket until my fingers closed around the thick paper. I desperately wanted to tell my parents about it. But I had a feeling that if I did, I would finally see my mum's constantly upbeat mood break.

I scrunched the letter up into a ball, but left in my pocket.

An hour later, I had my suitcase beside me, and I was waiting with my parents while Sally and Percy got ready.

We were taking Gabe's '78 Camaro to get to Montauk, which I figured he wouldn't be too pleased about - not that any of us cared.

Percy, Sally and Gabe came out - the latter must've taken a break from his poker game long enough to watch us lug our bags down the stairs to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing Sally's cooking — and more importantly, his oh-so-important car — for the whole weekend.

"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," I heard him warn Percy as I helped load the last bag. "Not one little scratch."

Like he'd be the one driving. He was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame one - or both - of us.

Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair case as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.

Percy and I got in the back of the Camaro with my dad and my best friend told his mum to step on it.

Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.

Immediately, I loved the place.

Percy had been going there since he was a baby. His mum had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but Percy told me he knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met his dad.

As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.

We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through a cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples Sally had brought from work.

I guess I should explain the blue food.

See, Gabe had once told Sally there was no such thing.

They had this fight, which probably seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, Sally went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue sweet from the shop. This — along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like Percy.

My obsession with green stemmed from a much less interesting story, involving a lot of boring and lonely summers, some green paint, and the walls of our old house.

When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. My mum told everyone embarrassing stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. I kept trying to stop her, but Percy and I were laughing too hard. Then Sally took over and told ones about Percy, and he blushed a deep fire red. She told us about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.

Eventually, I convinced Percy to ask about what seemed to be on his mind — his father. Sally's eyes went all misty. My mum and dad got really teary - I wasn't exactly sure why. Sympathy for their best friend?

"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."

I smiled. His eyes and mine were almost exactly the same, but neither of my parents had sea-green eyes. Only brown and blue. I figured it had probably skipped a generation, but I'd never seen anything quite so vivid until I met Percy.

Sally fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."

I looked at Percy, and could tell what he was thinking. I often thought the same thing when I saw my mum's beaming face, or my dad's happy-go-lucky smile. He was wondering how she could say that. What was so great about him? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.

"How old was I?" he asked. "I mean...when he left?"

She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."

"But...he knew me as a baby." Percy had a scared expression on his face, like he was grasping at a faint memory that was slipping away.

"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."

Percy's expression turned hard and angry. I tried to imagine myself in his shoes; he was angry at his father, he resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry Sally. They were stuck with Smelly Gabe. I put my hand on his arm, trying to calm him.

"Are you going to send me away again?" he asked her. I found myself staring at my parents, silently asking them the same question. "To another boarding school?"

Sally pulled a marshmallow from the fire.

"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think...I think we'll have to do something."

I looked at my mum and dad, but they wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Because you don't want me around?"

Sally's eyes welled with tears.

My mum took my hand, squeezed it tight. Sally did the same to her son. "Oh, Percy, no. I-I _have _to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."

Her words reminded me of what Mr Brunner had said to us — that it was best for us to leave Yancy.

"Because we're not normal," I whispered.

Dad chuckled slightly. "You say that as if it's a bad thing, Hermione. But you don't realise how important you are. " he faltered. "We thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away for you both. We thought you'd finally be safe."

"Safe from what?"

He met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me — all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.

During year four (third grade), a man in a black trench coat had stalked me in the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.

Before that — a really early memory. I was in Nursery, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mum screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.

In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.

I knew I should tell my parents about the letter that weighed down my pocket, the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my maths teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell them. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.

"We've tried to keep you as close to us as we could," Sally sighed. "They told us that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, really — the place your father wanted to send you, Percy. And I just...I just can't stand to do it. None of us can."

"My father wanted me to go to a special school?" Percy asked.

"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."

My head was spinning. Why would his dad — who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see him born — talk to Sally about a summer camp?

"You said us," I noticed. "What do you mean?"

"Jean and Dan thought it would be a good idea to send you there - if there's no other option." Sally offered as explanation, but I could sense a lie behind her words. I glanced at Percy, relieved to see that the same thoughts were running through his head.

Why would I need to go too? What sort of camp would make them seem so dreading? It didn't matter that we were keeping secrets from our parents, because our parents were keeping secrets from us.

"I'm sorry, Percy," she said. "But I can't talk about it. I - I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."

"For good?" I asked. "But if it's only a summer camp..."

All three of them turned toward the fire, and I knew from their expressions that if we asked them any more questions they would be pushed over the edge. I sensed that they needed time alone, so Percy and I spent the rest of the evening splashing in the waves.

That night I had a vivid dream.

It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf.

The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.

I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, _No!_

I woke with a start.

Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery. Percy was also sitting bolt upright in his bed.

With the next thunder-clap, my dad woke. He sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."

I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.

Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice — someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.

My mum and Sally sat up suddenly, and Sally sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.

Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't...he wasn't exactly Grover.

"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"

Sally looked between me and Percy in terror — not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.

"Hermione," my mum said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"

I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.

_"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" _he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you _tell _them?"

I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his trousers on — and where his legs should be...where his legs should be...

My mum looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before - the one I'd hoped she'd never have to use: _"Hermione. _Tell me _now_!"

I glanced at Percy and stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs Dodds. All three adults stared at us, their face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.

Sally grabbed her purse, tossed a rain jacket at Percy, and said, "Get to the car. All of you. _Go_!_"_

Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.

Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.

**IMPORTANT!**

**I now have a poll on my profile about this story, which I really need someone to vote on! Please, please vote. I can't do the fifth chapter without deciding!**

**-Rebecca**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey guys! This chapter was *so* close to being late, but I negotiated with my mum to let me stay up a bit!**

**This chapter is quite different (but not as much as last time) to the book. I still need answers on my question (who should be a daughter of Demeter?)! So please check out my profile poll for the choices. **

**I don't really like the plot of this chapter either, so please tell me how to improve! If you see any mistakes, correct me! I take constructive criticism. And as usual, follow, favourite, comment, etc.!**

**-Rebecca**

**PS: Enjoy! (And thank you so much for the twenty-two follows, eleven favourites and eleven reviews! It means a lot!)  
**

**ϟ ϟ ϟ**

_**Hermione Granger and the Lightning Thief**_

_**Chapter Four: Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Trousers**_

_**Chapter Dedication: percyjacksonfan135 for reviewing three times in a row!  
**_

We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the wind shield. I didn't know how Sally could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.

Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants.

But, no, the smell was one I remembered from playgroup field trips to the petting zoo — lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.

All I could think to say was, "So, you and our parents..." I gestured between me and Percy, "know each other?"

Grover's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But they knew I was watching you."

"Watching us?"

"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I _am _your friend."

"Umm...what _are _you, exactly?" I queried.

"That doesn't matter right now."

Percy spluttered. "It doesn't matter?" I asked. "From the waist down, our best friend is a donkey—"

Grover let out a sharp, throaty _"Blaa-ha-ha!"_

I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.

"Goat!" he cried.

"What?" Percy asked.

"I'm a _goat _from the waist down."

"You just said it didn't matter." I pointed out.

_"Blaa-ha-ha!_ There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"

I lurched forward as something clicked in my head. "Wait. Satyrs. You mean like...Greek and Roman myths?"

"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a _myth, _Hermione? Was Mrs Dodds a myth?"

"So you _admit _there was a Mrs Dodds!" Percy yelled in triumph.

"Of course." Grover said, like it was obvious.

"Then why—"

"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You both started to realise who you are."

Humans...as in, we weren't? "Who we—wait a minute, what do you mean?"

The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.

"Percy, Hermione" Sally said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."

"Safety from what? Who's after us?"

"Oh, nobody much," Grover replied offhandedly, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."

"Grover!"

"Sorry, Mrs Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"

I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had an imagination, sure, but I could never think up something this elaborate. I could never dream up something this weird.

Sally made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.

"Where are we going?" Percy and I asked at the same time.

"The summer camp Sally told us about."

"The place your father wanted to send you."

They answered at the same time, but my mother and Sally's voices were tight; they was trying for our sake not to be scared.

"The place you didn't want us to go."

"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."

"Because some old ladies cut yarn." Percy said flatly.

"Those weren't old ladies," Grover shook his head. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means — the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to...when someone's about to die."

"Whoa." Percy stopped him from going any further.

"You said 'you.'" I pointed out.

"No I didn't." Grover protested. "I said 'someone.'"

"You meant 'you.' As in _us._"

"I meant _you, _like 'someone.' Not you, _you._"

"Kids!" my mum shrilled.

Sally pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.

"What was that?" I asked.

"We're almost there," my dad murmured, ignoring my question. He'd been unusually quiet since this whole confusing event began.

My stomach seemed to hit the floor and turned to ice as I remembered the letter.

What had it said?

_Everything is about to_ _change._

Shakily, I drew it from my pocket and studied the parchment it was written on. The back of the paper was almost blank. In the bottom right corner were three lines of symbols, with I recognised from Mr Brunner's class; Ancient Greek. How had I never noticed before? The ink was emerald green, shiny and swirling on the paper.

As I watched, the ink curled and crept around the paper, more Greek symbols revealing themselves. Soon, the whole bottom line was completed, and it flashed for a moment, before a second line above began to form.

A hidden letter.

My hand shook with fear. Percy glanced at me worriedly, so I handed him the letter. His eyes widened, but he stayed silent. I took it back and scrunched it up.

Before I could slide it, unnoticed, back into my pocket, it was snatched out of my grasp for the second time in twenty-four hours. I heard a sharp intake of breath, and looked up to see my mum rocking back and forth in her seat. She'd passed the letter to my dad, who passed it to Sally - which I thought was pretty dangerous considering she was already driving like a maniac.

Sally gave it to Grover, who seemed ready to pass out cold.

"When, and where, did you get this, Mione?" he asked slowly.

"It was on my bed when I got home." I waited a few seconds, thundering rumbling outside, for them to answer my hidden question. When they didn't, I crossed my fingers. I had a feeling we'd be needing all the luck we could get. "Who's Lady Alkmene Trivia?"

"It...it doesn't matter right now. Lets just focus on getting there."

The letter was shoved back into my hand, and everyone in the car was silent. The only sounds were heavy breathing, hammering hearts, the wheels and engine of the car, the rattling thunder outside, and the strange roaring noise behind us.

"Another mile." my mum whispered under her breath. "Please. Please. Please."

I didn't know where _there _was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.

Outside was nothing but rain and darkness — the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the creature with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really _hadn't _been human. She'd meant to kill us.

Then I thought about Mr Brunner...and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling _boom!, _and our car exploded.

I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.

I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."

"Hermione!" my mum shouted.

"I'm okay..."

I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.

Lightning. That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. On the right next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!"

He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, "No!" I yelled.

"Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!" Percy shouted, coming over beside me. If the situation had been any less dire, I might've laughed.

Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.

"Everyone," Sally began, "we have to..." Her voice faltered.

I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.

I swallowed hard. "Who is—"

"Everyone," Sally echoed herself, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."

She threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. My mum tried hers on the shot-gun side. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.

I tried Percy's, as we'd managed to swap sides, and it gave way, spattering me with thick mud.

"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Both of you—you have to run."

"Do you see that big tree?" Sally asked.

_"What?"_

Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.

"That's the property line," she said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."

"You're all coming too." I said firmly.

Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.

"No!" I shouted. "You _are _coming with me. Mum, dad, you too. Help us carry Grover."

"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.

The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realised he _couldn't _be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands — huge meaty hands — were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head...was his head. And the points that looked like horns…

"He doesn't want _us_," my mother told me. "He wants _you. _Besides, we can't cross the property line."

"But..."

"We don't have time. Go. Please."

I got mad, then—mad at my mother, mad at my dad, at Sally, at Grover the goat, at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.

The rain was sheeting in through the open car door. "We're going together. Come on."

"I told you—"

"Mum!" Percy said. "I am not leaving you. Neither of us will. Help us with Grover."

I didn't wait for them to answer. I scrambled outside, Percy dragging Grover from the car. Once I was out, I held up his other arm. He was surprisingly light, but we couldn't have carried him very far if our parents hadn't come to our aid.

Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.

Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of _Muscle Man _magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except under wear—I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.

His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.

I recognised the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.

I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"

"Pasiphae's son," my mother said.

"I wish we'd known how badly they want to kill you." mum added, which really didn't help my panicked state.

"But he's the Min—"

"Don't say his name," Sally warned. "Names have power."

The pine tree was still way too far — a hundred yards uphill at least.

I glanced behind me again.

The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.

"Food?" Grover moaned.

"Shhh," I told him. I turned to Sally, since she seemed to be the expert on this. "What's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"

"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."

As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.

_Not a scratch, _I remembered Gabe saying.

Oops.

"You two," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"

"How do you know all this?" Percy's voice shook.

"We've been worried about an attack for a long time. We should have expected this. We were selfish, keeping you near us."

"Keeping us near you? But—"

Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.

He'd smelled us.

The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker,

The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.

Our parents must've been exhausted, but mum, dad and Sally shouldered Grover. "Go! Separate! Remember what I said."

I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling my mum was right — it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, keeping hold of Percy's arm, as I didn't want to let go of the only other person who seemed in just as much shock as I was. I turned, and saw the creature bearing down on us. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.

He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.

The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing.

So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side, pushing Percy in front of me.

The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, towards the adults, who were setting Grover down in the grass.

We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as Sally had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.

The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing the three adults, who were now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.

"Run!" Sally told us. "We can't go any farther. Run!"

But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her.

They tried to sidestep, as my mum had told us to do, my mum and Sally going to the left whilst my dad rolled to the right, but the monster had learned his lesson.

His hands shot out and grabbed my mum and dad by the neck as they tried to get away. Sally went into a dive-roll, escaping his clutches by a few centimetres. He lifted my parents as they struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.

"Mum!" I screamed. "Dad!"

My mother caught my eyes, and managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"

Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my parents' necks, and they dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if they were holographic projections. A blinding flash, and they were simply...gone.

"No!"

Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs — the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs Dodds grew talons.

Sally came up standing from her roll, coughing and spluttering, her clothes covered in stary bits of grass. The monster turned on her quickly, not even the slightest bit fazed from its latest kill. Before Percy or I could move, he roared down the hill at tremendous speed, his hands outstretched lest she try to escape.

Seeing there was no escape, Sally looked at both of us, terror in her eyes. She knew she couldn't outrun it, and it seemed to be getting clever. She pushed her hands out in front of her, signalling for us to run, as the monster jumped, and landed on top of her, crushing her into the ground.

She dissolved into a flash of gold light. Just like my parents.

I heard Percy screech beside me. I gripped his arm harder, and he returned to favour.

The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.

I couldn't allow that.

Percy stripped off my red rain jacket. It was a weak weapon, but the best shot we had.

"Hey!" I screamed whilst Percy waving the jacket. We ran to one side of the monster.

"Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"

"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward us, shaking his meaty fists.

I had an idea — a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all.

I pulled Percy, and flattened my back to the big pine tree. My best friend looked at me like I was crazy, but seemed to get the idea. He continued to wave his red jacket in front of the bull-man.

We were thinking we'd jump out of the way at the last moment.

But it didn't happen like that.

The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab us whichever way we tried to dodge.

Time slowed down.

My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.

How did I do that?

I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out. I slipped off his neck, until I was hanging onto the left horn. I would've overturned the monster, and we would've gone sprawling down the hill, if Percy hadn't been dangling off the right one, keeping us balanced.

The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake us. I locked my arms around his horn to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.

The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed us flat, but I was starting to realise that this thing had only one gear: forward.

Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tongue off.

"Food!" Grover moaned.

The bull-man wheeled towards him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my parents and Sally, made them disappear in a flash of light, and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around the horn I was hanging from, braced my feet against his ribcage, and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—_snap!_

The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. There was a thump somewhere across the hill as Percy was thrown too. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.

The monster charged.

Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. I pulled Percy up from the grass. He shook the stars out of his eyes, and I noted the horn in his hands. As the monster barreled past, hornless, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.

The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at the two ragged conical bone weapons sticking out of either side of his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like the adults, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs Dodds had burst apart.

The monster was gone.

The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief. I'd just seen my parents vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to stumble over to him, gripping Percy's arm so I couldn't be seperated from him too. We hauled him up and stagger down into the valley, towards the lights of the farm house. I was crying, whimpering, calling for my parents, but I held on to Grover and Percy — I wasn't going to let them go.

The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and two younger people, a boy and a girl. The girl's blond hair was curled like a princess's, the boy's pale white-blond hair was flattened by thr rain.

The three looked down at us, and the boy gave a sharp intake of breath. The girl looked at him strangely, then muttered, "They're the ones. They must be."

"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "They're still conscious. Bring them inside."


	5. Chapter 5

**I AM SO SORRY! I had Drama and rowing training after school yesterday, so I had no time to edit and update. (Here I am with the excuses _again_!) But I promise to get Saturday's update in on time (although it is my birthday that day, so it might be at midnight!).**

**As usual, please tell me if I've made any mistakes in grammar or if you have any idea on how I can improve the plot of this chapter! Comments, follows and favourites mean a lot!  
**

**-Rebecca  
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**PS: Enjoy, and thank you for the amazing twenty-six follows, fifteen favourites and fourteen reviews! I never imagined that this story would be that popular after just four chapters! It means so much to me!**

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_ **Hermione Granger and the Lightning Thief**_

_**Chapter Five: We Play Pinochle With A Horse  
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_**Chapter Dedication: Seeing Sounds for their really nice review! Hope to keep you intrigued for the rest of the book!**_

I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.

I must've woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The boy with pale white-blond hair hovered over me, smirking as he scraped drips off my chin with a spoon. I thought I saw the girl, leaning over another bed - Percy's, maybe? - but I couldn't be sure.

When he saw my eyes open, he beckoned the girl over. Furtively, she asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"

I managed to croak, "What?"

She looked around, as if afraid someone would over hear us. "What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!"

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I don't..."

Somebody knocked on the door, and the boy quickly filled my mouth with pudding.

The next time I woke up, both the girl and boy were gone.

A husky blond guy, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over me. He had blue eyes - at least a dozen of them - on his cheeks, his forehead, the backs of his hands.

When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my legs, a pillow behind my neck. All that was great, but my mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest. My tongue was dry and nasty and every one of my teeth hurt.

On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry. I didn't like apples or apple juice, but I was too thirsty to care.

My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around it.

"Careful," a familiar voice said.

Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn't slept in a week.

Under his arms, he cradled two shoe boxes. He was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD. Just plain old Grover. Not the goat boy.

I glanced next to me and saw Percy, lying in a chair similar to mine, a pillow behind his head, his eyes open. He too held a glass of the apple juice-looking liquid, grasping at it like it might fall to the ground and shatter at any moment.

So maybe I'd had a nightmare. Maybe my parents and Sally were okay. We were still on holiday, and we'd stopped here at this big house for some reason. And...

"You saved my life," Grover said to both of us. "I...well, the least I could do...I went back to the hill. I thought you might want this."

Reverently, he placed one of the shoe boxes in my lap. He gave the other to Percy.

Inside was a black-and-white bull's horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn't been a nightmare.

"The Minotaur," Percy said.

"Umm, Percy, it isn't a good idea-"

"That's what they call him in the Greek myths, isn't it?" I interrupted. "The Minotaur. Half man, half bull."

Grover shifted uncomfortably. "You've been out for two days. How much do you remember?"

"My mum. My dad." I whimpered. "And Sally. Are they really..."

He looked down.

I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.

Three of my favourite people in the world were gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.

"I'm sorry," Grover sniffled. "I'm a failure. I'm-I'm the worst satyr in the world."

He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. I mean, the Converse hi-top came off. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.

"Oh, Styx!" he mumbled.

Thunder rolled across the clear sky.

As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, I thought, _Well, that settles it_.

Grover was a satyr. I was willing to bet that if I shaved his curly brown hair, I'd find tiny horns on his head.

But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even minotaurs. All that meant was my parents really had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.

I was alone. An orphan. I would have to live...in an orphanage? With Percy and Smelly Gabe?

No. That would never happen. I would live on the streets first. I would pretend I was seventeen and join the army. I'd do something.

Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid - poor goat, satyr, whatever - looked as if he expected to be hit.

"It wasn't your fault." Percy and I reassured him at the same time.

"Yes, it was. I was supposed to _protect _you."

"Did our parents ask you to protect us?"

"No. But that's my job. I'm a keeper. At least...I was."

"But why..." I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.

"Don't strain yourself," Grover said. "Here." He helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips. Then he turned towards the other chair.

I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn't that at all. It was strawberry trifle. Liquid trifle. And not just any trifle - my mum's homemade strawberry trifle, hot and sweet, with chocolate shavings sprinkled on the top. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn't go away, but I felt as if my dad had just brushed his hand against my cheek, or my mum had greeted me home from boarding school with a large array of homemade goods, telling me that everything was going to be okay. Back when we lived in England, she would always make my favourite foods -especially trifle - as a coming-home gift.

Before I knew it, I'd drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I'd just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn't even melted.

"Was it good?" Grover asked.

I nodded.

"What did it taste like?" He sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.

"Sorry," I said. "I should've let you taste."

His eyes got wide. "No! That's not what I meant. I just...wondered."

"Hot strawberry trifle," I said. "My mum's. Home made."

"My mum's home made chocolate-chip cookies," Percy managed to say. I smiled weakly at him, and he attempted to return the gesture.

He sighed. "And how do you feel?"

I thought about his question, but my mind was slow in warming up. "Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards." Percy decided. I nodded in agreement.

"That's good," he said. "That's good. I don't think either of you could risk drinking any more of that stuff."

"What do you mean?"

He took the empty glasses from us gingerly, as if they were dynamite, and set it back on the table. "Come on. Chiron and Mr D are waiting."

The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse. My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. Grover offered to carry the Minotaur horn, but I held on to it. I'd paid for that souvenir the hard way. I wasn't going to let it go.

As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath.

We must've been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn't process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture: an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.

Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond-haired girl and boy who'd spoon-fed Percy and me popcorn-flavored pudding were leaning on the porch rail next to them, along with a girl with long black hair. She looked about a year younger than me.

The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels - a cherub. That's it. He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park.

He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in at one of Gabe's poker parties, except I got the feeling that this guy could've out-gambled even my Percy's step father.

"That's Mr D," Grover murmured to us. "He's the camp director. Be polite. The blond girl, that's Annabeth Chase. She's just a camper, but she's been here longer than just about anybody. The boy is her half-brother, Draco Malfoy. This is his second summer here. The girl is Ginny Weasley, Draco's best friend. This is her first year. And you already know Chiron..."

He pointed at the guy whose back was to me.

First, I realised he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognised the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.

"Mr Brunner!" I cried at the same time as Percy.

The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers _B_.

"Ah, good, Percy, Hermione" he said. "Now we have five for pinochle."

He offered me a chair to the right of Mr D, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you."

"Uh, thanks." I scooted a little farther away from him because, if there was one thing I had learned from living next to Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult has been hitting the happy juice. If Mr D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr.

"Annabeth? Draco? Ginny?" Mr Brunner called to the black-haired girl and blond girl and boy.

They came forward and Mr Brunner introduced us. "These two nursed you back to health. And this is Ginny. Why don't the three of you go check on Percy and Hermione's bunks? We'll be putting them in cabin eleven for now."

Draco said, "Sure, Chiron." His voice had an English accent to it.

He was probably my age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic his deep tan and his blond hair, which looked a lot darker in the light. He was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California guy would look like, except his eyes ruined the image. They were startling grey, like storm clouds; guarded and intimidating too, as if he were analysing the best way to take me down in a fight.

I looked at the girl, and saw the family resemblance. She had the same blond hair, if a few shades closer to brown, and the same piercing eyes, watching my every move in anticipation for an attack.

The other girl had black hair, the same darkness as Percy's, which reached just below her shoulders. It was highlighted with strands of bright red. Her eyes were shocking electric blue.

Annabeth glanced at me, then at minotaur horn in my hands, then at Percy. I imagined she was going to say, _You killed a minotaur! _or _Wow, you're so awesome! _or something like that.

Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep."

Even I managed a fluttering smile at that.

Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.

Draco and Ginny turned to follow, but they seemed apprehensive. They looked back at me, and I saw something glimmer in both of their eyes for a moment. Fear? Envy? No. It wasn't either of those.

It was _recognition_.

Draco opened his mouth as if to say something, but Ginny calmly placed her foot over his, and stepped down hard on it with her heel. He bit his lip and scowled at her, but stayed silent. Then he gave a nod in our direction, and ran off to catch up with Annabeth.

Ginny, on the other hand, turned to Mr Brunner. "I was sent up here to tell you something," she informed him.

"Oh yes?" Mr Brunner said, leaning forwards on his wheelchair in interest.

"Hannah's gone missing."

"Hannah Abbott?" Mr Brunner asked worriedly. "From cabin four?" Ginny nodded. "What happened?"

"Well, she said her dad was bringing her over from England. The last contact I had with her was when she got to New York. She said she was on her way, but her mum had asked her to do something first. No one's seen her since - I asked."

Mr Brunner's forehead creased into a frown. "Have you tried contacting her?"

"There's no connection." Ginny was chewing her lip now.

"I'll make an announcement at dinner, and contact her parents. She can't have vanished completely. She might just be lost." he sounded like he was reassuring himself more than Ginny. Nevertheless, Ginny gave a curt nod to him, then to us, then ran off to catch up with Draco.

I shook my head. Everything was so strange. I tried to convince myself that I'd imagined what I'd seen, but the thing was; I knew I hadn't. Draco and Ginny had seen me before. Not just that, they knew me well. Draco's accent was English - and I was ready to bet that Ginny's was too - so I thought I might've known them before at one of my old schools. I had been pretty antisocial, so I maybe I just hadn't noticed. But even though I racked my brain, I couldn't think of anywhere I'd seen them before.

I sighed and turned to Mr Brunner.

"So," Percy said, anxious to change the subject. "You, uh, work here, Mr Brunner?"

"Not Mr Brunner," the ex-Mr Brunner said. "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron."

"Okay." Totally confused, I looked at the director. "Mr D...does that stand for something?"

Mr D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I'd just belched loudly. "Young lady, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason."

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

"I must say, both of you," Chiron-Brunner broke in, "I'm glad to see you alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time."

"House call?"

"My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to...ah, take a leave of absence."

I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr Brunner had taken the class.

"You came to Yancy just to teach us?" Percy asked.

Chiron nodded. "Honestly, I wasn't sure about either of you at first. We contacted your parents, let them know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it here alive, and that's always the first test."

"Grover," Mr D grumbled impatiently, "are you playing or not?"

"Yes, sir!" Grover trembled as he took the fifth chair, though I didn't know why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.

"You _do _know how to play pinochle?" Mr D eyed me suspiciously.

"I'm afraid not," Percy spoke for the both of us.

"I'm afraid not, _sir_." Mr D said.

"_Sir_," I repeated through clenched teeth. I was liking this camp director less and less.

"Well," he told us, "it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all _civilised _young people to know the rules."

"I'm sure the children can learn," Chiron said.

"Please," Percy said, in that whiny six-year-old-kid tone that all adults hate, "what is this place? What are we doing here? Mr Brun- Chiron - why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach us?

Mr D snorted. "I asked the same question."

The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in his pile.

Chiron smiled at us sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let us know that no matter what our average was, _we _was his star students. He expected _us _to have the right answer.

"Children," he said. "Did your parents tell you nothing?"

"They said..." I remembered Sally's sad eyes, looking out over the sea. "Sally told us that she was afraid to send Percy here, even though his father had wanted her to. She said that I would need to go too. She...said that once we were here, we probably couldn't leave. They wanted to keep us close to them."

"Typical," Mr D said. "That's how they usually get killed. Young lady, are you bidding or not?"

"What?" I asked.

He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did.

"I'm afraid there's too much to tell," Chiron said. "I'm afraid our usual orientation film won't be sufficient."

"Orientation film?" I asked.

"No," Chiron decided. "Well, children. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know-" he pointed to the horns in the shoe boxes. "-That you have killed the Minotaur. No small feat, either, I should let you know. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods - the forces you call the Greek gods - are very much alive."

I stared at the others around the table.

I waited for somebody to yell, _Not! _

But all I got was Mr D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points.

"Mr D," Grover asked timidly. "If you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"

"Eh? Oh, all right."

Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully.

"Wait," Percy told Chiron. "You're telling us there's such a thing as God."

"Well, now," Chiron said. "God - capital-G God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."

"Metaphysical? But you were just talking about-"

"Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter."

"Smaller?" I spluttered.

"Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class."

"Zeus," Percy ticked off one of his fingers. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them."

And there it was again; distant thunder on a cloudless day.

"Young man," said Mr D, "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you."

"But they're stories," I decided to interrupt. "They're...myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science."

"Science!" Mr D scoffed. "And tell me, Hermione Granger and Perseus Jackson-" I felt Percy flinch beside me when Mr D used his real name, which he never told anybody, "-what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" the middle-aged cherub continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals - they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come _so-o-o _far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me."

I wasn't liking Mr D much, but there was something about the way he called me mortal, as if...he wasn't. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his diet coke can, and keeping his mouth shut.

"Percy, Hermione," Chiron said. "You may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that _immortal _means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?"

I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, but the tone of Chiron's voice made me hesitate.

"You mean, whether people believed in you or not," I replied finally.

"Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Hermione Granger, that some day people would call _you _a myth, just created to explain how little girls can get over losing their parents?"

My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I wasn't going to let him. "I wouldn't like it. But I don't believe in gods." I ground my teeth.

"Oh, you'd better," Mr D murmured. "Before one of them incinerates you."

Grover said, "P-please, sir. She's just lost her parents. She's in shock."

Percy opened his mouth to argue with Mr D, but he was cut off.

"A lucky thing, too," Mr D growled, playing a card. "Bad enough I'm confined to this miserable job, working with children who don't even believe."

He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.

My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up.

"Mr D," he warned. "Your restrictions."

Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.

"Dear me." He looked at the sky and yelled, "Old habits! Sorry!"

More thunder.

Mr D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the can, and went back to his card game.

Chiron winked at me. "Mr D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits."

"A wood nymph," Percy repeated. I was still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.

"Yes," Mr D confessed. "Father loves to punish me. The first time, prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time - well, she really was pretty, and I couldn't stay away - the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. 'Be a better influence,' he told me. 'Work with youths rather than tearing them down.' Ha. Absolutely unfair."

Mr D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.

"And..." Percy stammered, "Your father is..."

_"Di immortales, _Chiron," Mr D said. "I thought you taught these kids the basics. My father is Zeus, of course."

I ran through the D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr D were his master.

"You're Dionysus," I realised.

"The god of wine." Percy completed, looking as bewildered as I felt.

Mr D rolled his eyes. "What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, '_Well, duh!_'?"

"Y-yes, Mr D."

"Then, _well, duh!_ children. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?"

"You're a god." I stated.

"Yes, child."

"A god. You."

He turned to look at both of us straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a strait-jacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.

"Would you like to test me, child?" he said quietly.

"No. No, sir." Percy answered for me, before Mr D decided to incinerate us. I flashed him a thankful smile.

The fire died a little. He turned back to the card game. "I believe I win."

"Not quite, Mr D," Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, "The game goes to me."

I thought Mr D was going to vaporise Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he was used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose too.

"I'm tired," Mr D said. "I believe I'll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk - _again - _about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment."

Grover's face beaded with sweat. "Y-yes, sir."

Mr D turned to me. "Cabin eleven, Hermione Granger and Percy Jackson. And mind your manners."

He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.

"Will Grover be okay?" I asked Chiron.

Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. "Old Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been...ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."

"Mount Olympus," Percy said. "You're telling us there really is a palace there?"

"Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, children, just as the gods do."

"You mean the Greek gods are here?" Percy asked. All this information was just being dropped on our shoulders, but no one was explaining. "Like...in _America_?"

"Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West."

"The what?"

"Come now, children. What you call 'Western Civilisation.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know - or as I hope you know, since you passed my course- the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps - Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on- but the same forces, the same gods."

"And then they died." the words were out of my mouth reflexively before I could stop them. I glanced around warily, but Mr D was nowhere in sight, and the sky seemed to be taking a break from rumbling constantly at every wrong word.

"Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they've ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, children, of course they are now in your United States.

"Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Hermione - in England, see the banks and museums. Look at the statue of Prometheus in the Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not - and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either - America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here."

It was all too much, especially the fact that the two of _us _seemed to be included in Chiron's _we, _as if I were part of some club.

"Who are you, Chiron?" I asked tiredly. Another thought dawned on me. "Who...who are we?"

Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralysed from the waist down.

"Who are you?" he mused. "Well, that's the question we all want answered, isn't it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be smores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate."

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realised that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobbly-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.

I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse's trunk.

"What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Hermione and Percy. Let's meet the other campers."

**I know you probably have a couple of questions for me - e.g. why is Ginny's hair black? - but I promise you that all will become clear...eventually. If there's anything you want to know (which isn't a plot spoiler) please review and ask me!**

**And thank you to the fourteen readers who voted on my pole! After results going 10:4, it was obvious who the choice was. Therefore, Hannah Abbott is our Hufflepuff daughter of Demeter!**

**Until Saturday (...tomorrow),**

**-Rebecca**


	6. Chapter 6

**I AM SO SORRY!**

**I've been so caught up with homework and tests, and it was my birthday on January 18th, and I'm in the process of getting four teeth removed. Plus I've been really ill. And I know you don't care about excuses, but you guys deserve a reason as to why I haven't updated for so long. I've missed you guys! So I'll go straight into the chapter, and do my usual speech at the end.**

**-Rebecca**

**PS: Enjoy! (and thank you so, so much for the thirty-one follows, sixteen favourites and eighteen comments I've had from you guys! You're amazing.)  
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_**Hermione Granger and the Lightning Thief**_

_**Chapter Six: We Become Supreme Rulers Of The Bathroom**_

_**Chapter Dedication: Nova-Cane-Love for being supportive and understanding!  
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Once I got over the fact that my Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour, though I was careful not to walk behind him. I'd done pooper-scooper patrol at the Equine Talent Contest for a stable I'd gone to - back in England - a few times and, I'm sorry, but I did not trust Chiron's back end the way I trusted his front.

The three of us passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One pointed to the Minotaur horns we were carrying. Another said, "That's _them_."

Most of the campers were older than Percy and me. Their satyr friends were bigger than Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALFBLOOD T-shirts, with nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn't normally shy, but the way they stared at me made me _completely_ uncomfortable. I felt like they were expecting me to do a flip or something.

I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I'd realised—four stories tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upscale seaside resort. I was eyeing the brass eagle weather vane on top when something caught my eye, a shadow in the uppermost window of the attic gable. Something had moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct impression I was being watched.

"What's up there?" Percy asked Chiron.

He looked to where we were pointing, and his smile faded. "Just the attic."

"Somebody lives there?"

"No," he said with finality. "Not a single living thing."

I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had moved that curtain.

"Come along, children," Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced. "Lots to see."

We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.

Chiron told us the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants and Mount Olympus. "It pays our expenses," he explained. "And the strawberries take almost no effort."

He said Mr D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy when he was around. It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr D was restricted from growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.

I watched the satyr playing his pipe. His music was causing lines of bugs to leave the strawberry patch in every direction, like refugees fleeing a fire. I wondered if Grover could work that kind of magic with music.

I wondered if he was still inside the farmhouse, getting chewed out by Mr D.

"Grover won't get in too much trouble, will he?" I asked Chiron. "I mean...he was a good protector. Really."

Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horse back like a saddle. "Grover has big dreams, Hermione. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable."

"What do you mean?" Percy asked.

"I feel it is his job to tell you that. But to reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill."

"But he did that!" I protested.

"I might agree with you," Chiron nodded. "But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I'm afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you in New York. Then there's the unfortunate...ah..._fate_ of your parents. And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the property line. The council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover's part."

I wanted to yell at how unfair that was. None of what happened was Grover's fault. I also felt really, really guilty. If we hadn't given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might not have gotten in trouble.

"He'll get a second chance, won't he?"

Chiron winced. "I'm afraid that _was _Grover's second chance. The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He's still so small for his age..."

"How old is he?"

"Oh, twenty-eight."

He said it in such an off-handed way, but I stopped walking as I faltered.

"What?" Percy asked in shock. "And he's in sixth grade?"

"Satyrs mature half as fast as humans. Grover has been the equivalent of a middle school student for the past six years."

"That's horrible." Percy shuddered.

"Quite," Chiron agreed. "At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career..."

"That's not fair." I complained. "What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?"

Chiron looked away quickly. "Let's move along, shall we?"

But I wasn't quite ready to let the subject drop. Something had occurred to me when Chiron talked about our parents' fate, as if he were intentionally avoiding the word _death. _The beginnings of an idea — a tiny, hopeful fire — started forming in my mind.

"Chiron," I said. "If the gods and Olympus and all that are real..."

"Yes, child?"

"Does that mean the Underworld is real, too?"

Chiron's expression darkened.

"Yes, Hermione." He paused, as if choosing his words care fully. "There is a place where spirits go after death. But for now...until we know more...I would urge you both to put that out of your mind."

"What do you mean, '_until we know more_'?"

"Come, children. Let's see the woods."

The whole 'children' thing was really starting to annoy me. We weren't _that _young.

As we got closer, I realised how huge the forest was. It took up at least a quarter of the valley, with trees so tall and thick, you could imagine nobody had been in there since the Native Americans.

"The woods are stocked, if you care to try your luck, but go armed." Chiron commented.

"Stocked with what?" I asked.

"Armed with what?" Percy added.

"You'll see. Capture the flag is Friday night. Do you have your own sword and shield?"

I raised an eyebrow, and it was Percy's turn to stop walking for a moment. "Our own—?"

"No," Chiron said. "I don't suppose you do. I think a size five will do. I'll visit the armoury later."

I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armoury, but there was too much else to think about, so the tour continued. We saw the archery range, the canoeing lake, the stables (which Chiron didn't seem to like very much), the javelin range, the sing-along amphitheater, and the arena where Chiron said they held sword and spear fights.

"Sword and spear fights?" I asked.

"Cabin challenges and all that," he explained. "Not lethal. Usually. Oh, yes, and there's the mess hall."

Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen stone picnic tables. No roof. No walls.

"What do you do when it rains?" I asked.

Chiron looked at me as if I'd gone gone a little strange.

"We still have to eat, don't we?" I decided to drop the subject.

Finally, he showed us the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a row on either side. And they were without doubt the most bizarre collection of buildings I'd ever seen.

Except for the fact that each had a large brass number above the door (odds on the left side, evens on the right), they looked absolutely nothing alike. Number nine had smokestacks, like a tiny factory. Number four had tomato vines on the walls and a roof made out of real grass.

Seven seemed to be made of solid gold, which gleamed so much in the sunlight it was almost impossible to look at. They all faced a commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek statues, fountains, flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops.

In the centre of the field was a huge stone-lined fire pit. Even though it was a warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. A girl about nine years old was tending the flames, poking the coals with a stick.

The pair of cabins at the head of the field, numbers one and two, looked like his-and-hers mausoleums, big white marble boxes with heavy columns in front. Cabin One was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve. Its polished bronze doors shimmered like a hologram, so that from different angles lightning bolts seemed to streak across them.

Cabin Two was more graceful somehow, with slimmer columns garlanded with pomegranates and flowers. The walls were carved with images of peacocks.

"Zeus and Hera?" I guessed.

"Correct," Chiron said.

"Their cabins look empty."

"Several of the cabins are. That's true. No one ever stays in one or two. Or at least, that used to be the case."

Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot. Twelve cabins for the twelve Olympians. I could go with that. But why would some be empty? What had changed?

"What do you mean?" Percy asked.

"You've met Ginny, haven't you?" Chiron said.

"Yes."

"Well, that's your answer."

That just left me feeling even more confused than before, but I let the subject drop.

We stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three.

It wasn't high and mighty like cabin one, but long and low and solid. The outer walls were of rough gray stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral, as if the slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor. Percy and I both leaned forward to peeked inside the open doorway and Chiron said, "Oh, I wouldn't do that!"

Before he could pull us back, I caught the salty scent of the interior, like the wind on the shore at Montauk. The interior walls glowed like abalone. There were six empty bunk beds with silk sheets turned down. But there was no sign anyone had ever slept there. The place felt so sad and lonely, I was glad when Chiron put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Come along, children."

Most of the other cabins were crowded with campers.

Number five was bright red — a real nasty paint job, as if the color had been splashed on with buckets and fists. The roof was lined with barbed wire. A stuffed wild boar's head hung over the doorway, and its eyes seemed to follow me. Inside I could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, both girls and boys, arm wrestling and arguing with each other while rock music blared. The loudest was a girl maybe thirteen or fourteen. She wore a size XXXL CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirt under a camouflage jacket. She zeroed in on me and gave me an evil sneer. She reminded me of Nancy Bobofit, though the camper girl was much bigger and tougher looking, and her hair was long and stringy, and brown instead of red.

I kept walking, trying to stay clear of Chiron's hooves. "We haven't seen any other centaurs," I observed.

"No," said Chiron sadly. "My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, I'm afraid. You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But you won't see any here."

"You said your name was Chiron. Are you really..."

He smiled down at me. _"The _Chiron from the stories? Trainer of Hercules and all that? Yes, Hermione, I am."

"But, shouldn't you be dead?" Percy asked.

Chiron paused, as if the question intrigued him. "I honestly don't know about _should _be. The truth is, I _can't _be dead. You see, eons ago the gods granted my wish. I could continue the work I loved. I could be a teacher of heroes as long as humanity needed me. I gained much from that wish...and I gave up much. But I'm still here, so I can only assume I'm still needed."

I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It definitely wouldn't have made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list.

"Doesn't it ever get boring?" I wondered.

"No, no," he said. "Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring."

"Why depressing?"

Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again.

"Oh, look," he said. "Annabeth and Draco are waiting for us."

The blond siblings we'd met at the Big House were reading books in front of the last cabin on the left, number eleven. The black haired girl - Ginny - was nowhere to be seen.

When we reached them, they looked us over, Annabeth watching Percy critically, like she was still thinking about how much he drooled. Draco had the same look he'd had before as he glanced at me. He seemed distracted and irratible.

I tried to see what they were reading, but I couldn't make out the title. I thought my dyslexia was acting up. Then I realised the title wasn't even English. The letters looked Greek to me. I mean, literally Greek. There were pictures of temples and statues and different kinds of columns, like those in an architecture book.

"Annabeth, Draco," Chiron said, "I have masters' archery class at noon. Would you take Percy and Hermione from here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Cabin Eleven," Chiron told us, gesturing toward the doorway. "Make yourself at home."

Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp cabin, with the emphasis on _old. _The threshold was worn down, the brown paint peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor's symbols, a winged pole with two snakes wrapped around it. A caduceus, it was called.

Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center.

Chiron didn't go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw him they all stood and bowed respectfully.

"Well, then," Chiron said. "Good luck, children. I'll see you at dinner."

He galloped away toward the archery range.

I stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren't bowing anymore. They were staring at us, sizing us up. I knew this routine. I'd gone through it at enough schools.

"Well?" Annabeth prompted. "Go on."

So naturally Percy tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of himself.

There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything. I walked in smoothly after him. He glowered at me, and I did the mature thing: I stuck my tongue out at him.

Annabeth announced, "Percy Jackson and Hermione Granger, meet Cabin Eleven."

"Regular or undetermined?" somebody asked.

I didn't know what to say, but Draco answered. "Undetermined." his voice sounded a little strained when he said this, as if he was holding a laugh back.

Everybody groaned.

A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward.

"Now, now, campers. That's what we're here for. Welcome, Hermione. Welcome, Percy. You can have those spots on the floor, right over there."

The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.

"This is Luke," Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I glanced over and could've sworn she was blushing.

She saw me looking, and her expression hardened again. "He's your counsellor for now."

"For now?" I echoed.

"You're undetermined," Luke explained patiently. "They don't know which cabin to put you in, so you're here. Cabin Eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travellers."

I looked at the tiny section of floor they'd given me. I had nothing to put there to mark it as my own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur's horn. I thought about setting that down, but then I remembered that Hermes was also the god of thieves.

I looked around at the campers' faces, some sullen and suspicious, some grinning stupidly, some eyeing me as if they were waiting for a chance to pick my pockets.

"How long will we be here?" I asked.

"Good question," Luke said. "Until you're determined."

"How long will that take?" Percy put in.

The campers all laughed.

"Come on," Draco told us. "We'll show you the volleyball court."

"We've already seen it."

"Come on." Annabeth grabbed Percy's wrist and dragged him outside, the latter pulling me out after them. I could hear the kids of cabin eleven still laughing behind me.

Almost as soon as we were out, Draco murmured, "I have to go and see Pansy." and promptly left. Annabeth's face broken into a fond smile, but it disappeared the moment she saw me looking.

When we were a few feet further, Annabeth said, "Jackson, Granger, you have to do better than that."

"What?" Percy asked.

She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, "I can't believe I thought you were the ones."

"What's your problem?" I was getting angry now.

"All I know," Percy gritted his teeth, "is that we killed some bull guy—"

"Don't talk like that!" Annabeth scolded him. "You know how many kids at this camp wish they'd had your chance?"

"To get killed?" I shot back.

"To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?"

I shook my head. "Look, if the thing we fought really was _the _Minotaur, the same one in the stories..."

"Yes."

"Then there's only one."

"Yes."

"And he died, like, a gajillion years ago, right?" Percy interjected.

I nodded. "Yeah, Theseus killed him in the labyrinth. So..."

"Monsters don't die. They can be killed. But they don't die."

"Oh, thanks." I cheered sarcastically. "That clears it up."

"They don't have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you're lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them arche types. Eventually, they re-form."

I thought about Mrs Dodds. "You mean if we killed one, accidentally, with a sword—"

"The Fur...I mean, your maths teacher. That's right. She's still out there. You just made her very, very mad."

"How did you know about Mrs Dodds?"

"You both talk in your sleep." She said matter-of-factly, effectively putting a stop to our questions.

"You almost called her something." I noted. "A Fury? They're Hades' torturers, right?"

Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up and swallow her.

"You shouldn't call them by name, even here. We call them the Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all."

"Look, is there anything we _can _say without it thundering?" I sounded whiny, but right then I didn't care. Annabeth was starting to really annoy me.

"Why do we have to stay in cabin eleven, anyway?" Percy said. "Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of empty bunks right over there."

He pointed to the first few cabins, and Annabeth turned pale. "You don't just choose a cabin. It depends on who your parents are. Or...your parent."

She stared at us, waiting for us to get it.

"My mum is Sally Jackson," Percy said. "She works at the candy store in Grand Central Station. At least, she used to."

"I'm sorry about your mum, Percy. But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about your other parent. Your dad."

"He's dead. I never knew him."

Annabeth sighed. Clearly, she'd had this conversation before with other kids. "Your father's not dead, Percy."

"How can you say that?" I demanded. "You know him?"

"No, of course not."

"Exactly. And what about me?"

"What do you mean?"

"I have - had - both of my parents - they're dentists. Well, they were. And yet everyone was insisting that I should come here."

Annabeth sighed again. "I don't know about that."

"Then how can you-"

"I know _you._ You wouldn't be here if you weren't one of us."

"You don't know anything about me."

"No?" She raised an eyebrow. "I bet you moved around from school to school. I bet you were kicked out of a lot of them."

"How—"

"Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too."

I tried to swallow my embarrassment. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Taken together, it's almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? You too, Percy? That's because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD—you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battle field reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don't want you seeing them for what they are."

"You sound like...you went through the same thing?" Percy asked.

"Most of the kids here did. If you weren't like us, you couldn't have survived the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar."

"Ambrosia and nectar." I repeated blankly.

"The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff would've killed a normal kid. It would've turned your blood to fire and your bones to sand and you'd be dead. Face it. You're a half-blood."

A half-blood. Half what? My mind was reeling with so many questions I didn't know where to start.

Then a husky voice yelled, "Well! A newbie!"

I looked over. The big girl from the ugly red cabin was sauntering toward us, along with a smaller but just as pug-faced girl with the same hair and eyes as her friend. They had three other girls behind them, all big and ugly and mean looking like her, all wearing camo jackets.

"Clarisse," Annabeth sighed. "Why don't you go polish your spear or something?"

"Sure, Miss Princess," the smaller girl sneered. "So she can run you through with it Friday night."

_''Erre es korakas!"_ Annabeth said, which I somehow under stood was Greek for '_Go to the crows!_' though I had a feeling it was a worse curse than it sounded. "You don't stand a chance."

"We'll pulverise you," Clarisse said, but her eye twitched. Perhaps she wasn't sure she could follow through on the threat. She turned towards us. "Who are these little runts?"

"Percy Jackson, Hermione Granger," Annabeth said, "meet Clarisse La Rue-" she gestured to the bigger of the two. "-And Pansy Parkinson, daughters of Ares."

As soon as Annabeth said my name, I heard a sharp intake of breath from Pansy. I watched as her eyes probed my face, trying to figure something out. She opened her mouth to say something, just like Draco had, then thought better of it.

Her shock twisted back into a sneer. I blinked.

"Like...the war god?" Percy asked.

Clarisse sneered. "You got a problem with that?"

"No," he said, seemingly recovering his wits. "It explains the bad smell."

I snorted with laughter, but the rest of the Ares' kids' glares shut me up pretty quickly.

Clarisse growled. "We got an initiation ceremony for newbies, Prissy and Herman."

"Percy and Hermione."

"Whatever. Come on, I'll show you."

"Clarisse—" Annabeth tried to say.

"Stay out of it, wise girl."

Annabeth looked pained, but she did stay out of it, which actually really annoyed me. I mean, I knew we were the new kids, and we had to 'earn our own rep'. That was fine by me. I'd done this plenty of times at my old schools. But Clarisse and her friends were probably the strongest, most ruthless kids in the entire camp.

Percy grabbed my minotaur horn and handed both his and mine to Annabeth. He seemed to be getting ready to fight, but before I knew it, Pansy had me by the neck and was dragging me toward a cinder-block building that I knew immediately was the bathroom. Clarisse had Percy, and I could immediately tell I had the better option of assailant.

I was kicking and punching. I'd been in plenty of fights before, but Pansy had hands like iron. She dragged me into the girls' bathroom. There was a line of toilets on one side and a line of shower stalls down the other. It smelled just like any public bathroom, and I was thinking — as much as I _could _think with Pansy ripping my hair out — that if this place belonged to the gods, they should've been able to afford classier facilities.

Clarisse's friends were all laughing, and I was trying to find the strength I'd used to fight the Minotaur, but it just wasn't there.

"Like they're 'Big Three' material," Clarisse scoffed as Pansy pushed me toward one of the toilets. "Yeah, right. Minotaur probably fell over laughing, they were so stupid looking."

Her friends snickered. Pansy was being unusually quiet for a tormentor.

Annabeth stood in the corner, watching through her fingers.

Pansy bent me over on my knees and started pushing my head toward the toilet bowl. It reeked like rusted pipes and, well, like what goes into toilets. I strained to keep my head up. I was looking at the scummy water, thinking, _I will not go into that. I won't_.

Then something happened. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. I heard the plumbing rumble, the pipes shudder. Pansy's grip on my hair loosened as she stumbled backwards. Water shot out of the toilet, making an arc straight over my head, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Pansy screaming behind me.

A few seconds later, a second arc of water shot out of the toilet that was 'supposed' to be occupied by Percy's head. Clarisse tripped out of the cubicle, water spraying her further away.

I turned just as water blasted out of the toilet again, hitting Clarisse and Pansy straight in the face so hard it pushed them down onto their butts.

The water stayed on them like the spray from a fire hose, pushing them back into a shower stall.

They struggled, gasping, and their friends started coming toward them.

But then the other toilets exploded, too, and six more streams of toilet water blasted them back. The showers acted up, too, and together all the fixtures sprayed the camouflague girls right out of the bathroom, spinning them around like pieces of garbage being washed away.

As soon as they were out the door, I felt the tug in my gut lessen, and the water shut off as quickly as it had started.

The entire bathroom was flooded. Annabeth hadn't been spared.

She was dripping wet, but she hadn't been pushed out the door. She was standing in exactly the same place, staring at us in shock.

I looked down and realised I was sitting in the only dry spots in the whole room. Percy was sitting beside me, holding my shoulder to keep balanced, just as dry and just as shocked. There was a circle of dry floor around us, roughly fifty centimetres in radius.

I stood up, my legs shaky. Annabeth stared. "How did you..."

"I don't know." I answered before she could go any further. Percy just nodded, seconding my judgement.

We walked to the door. Outside, Clarisse, Pansy and her friends were sprawled in the mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk. Clarisse's hair was flattened across her face. Her camouflague jacket was sopping and she smelled like sewage. She gave us both a look of absolute hatred. "You are dead, newbies."

"You are totally dead." Pansy echoed, but she seemed a little distant - subdued.

I probably should have let it go, but I said, "You want to gargle with toilet water again, Pansy? Close your mouth."

Her friends had to hold her and Clarisse back. They dragged them toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid their flailing feet.

Annabeth stared at us. I couldn't tell whether she was just grossed out or angry at us for dousing her.

"What?" Percy demanded. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking," she said, "that I want you both on my team for capture the flag."

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**Anyone who spotted the 'A Very Potter Musical/Sequel' reference in there is officially epic! :)**

**This chapter, as you have probably noticed, wasn't too different to the original. You'll meet some some more HP characters in the next chapter, though. **

**And here's a question for debate: who is Hermione the daughter of? If you look at the chapter carefully, it's not as easy to guess as you might think.**

**I will try as hard as I can to get the next chapter out tomorrow. I owe you guys for not giving up on me. **

**As usual: I accept _constructive _criticism. Please tell me if I've made any mistakes (even if they're tiny!)**

**Follow, favourite, comment, vote, etc. It all means a lot to me!**

**-Rebecca**


	7. Chapter 7

**Hey guys! So I've decided to update sporadically from now on (as you might've noticed). There's a lot more changes in this chapter than the last, and you're going to meet a few more HP characters :)  
**

**As always, please tell me if I've got anything wrong, or if you have any suggestions. Follow, favourite, review!**

**-Rebecca**

**PS: Enjoy! (And thank you so, so much for twenty-five reviews, thirty-four follows and seventeen favourites this story has received. It means the world to me!)  
**

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_ **Hermione Granger and the Lightning Thief**_

_**Chapter Seven: My Dinner Goes Up In Smoke  
**_

_**Chapter Dedication: melancholyofm for their enthusiastic review! **_

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever we went, campers pointed at us and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.

She showed us a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sand-blasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.

Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.

"I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."

"Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets." Percy said.

"Whatever."

"It wasn't our fault." I explained.

She gave me a cynical look, and I realised it _was _our fault. _We_ had made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to my will. I had become one with the plumbing.

"You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth decided, sucking her teeth.

"Who?" Percy raised an eyebrow.

"Not who. What. The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."

I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once. I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.

I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.

"Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."

"I'm a girl..." I commented. It was really the only comment that came to mind. I was feeling completely overwhelmed.

"It doesn't matter to them." she shrugged.

"That's it. I want to go home now."

Annabeth frowned. "Don't you get it, Hermione? You _are _home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."

"You mean, mentally disturbed kids?" Percy put in.

"I mean _not human. _Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."

"Half-human and half-what?"

"I think you know."

I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs. I wasn't sure what it was. The answer had occurred to me, and I didn't like what it was implying.

"God," Percy said, voicing both our thoughts. "Half-god."

Annabeth nodded. She turned to my best friend. "Your father isn't dead, Percy. He's one of the Olympians."

"That's...crazy."

"Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?"

"But those are just—" I almost said _myths _again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years, _we _might be considered a myth.

I frowned. Some things just weren't adding up. "But if all the kids here are half-gods—"

"Demigods," Annabeth said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods."

I rolled my eyes. "Then why am I here?"

She looked uneasy, shifting from one foot to the other. "Your mum and dad, Hermione...one, or both, of them...isn't - wasn't - biologically related to you."

I felt my knees turn to jelly, and had to grip the railing to stop myself from falling. "You're a half-blood too." she told me. "You belong here."

It felt like some had just dropped the sky onto my shoulders. One of my parents wasn't actually my parent? Then which one was faking? Or maybe they both were. So who was my real parent?

Anger filled me. Either this was all some elaborate joke - though I got the feeling Annabeth was being truthful - or my so-called parents had lied to me for nearly thirteen years.

"Then who's your dad?" Percy snapped, standing next to me and putting his arms around me as I felt my body begin to shiver - out of shock or anger or cold, I wasn't sure.

Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling we'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject.

"My dad is a professor at West Point," she said. "I haven't seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history."

"He's human." Percy stated.

"What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?"

"Who's your mum, then?" I retorted.

"Cabin Six."

"Meaning?"

Annabeth straightened. "Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle."

_Okay_, I thought._ Why not?_

"And my dad?" Percy questioned eagerly.

"Undetermined," Annabeth said. "Like I told you before. Nobody knows." his face fell.

"Except my mother. She knew."

"Maybe not, Percy. Gods don't always reveal their identities."

"My dad would have. He loved her."

Annabeth gave him a cautious look. She didn't want to burst his bubble.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe he'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens."

"You mean sometimes it doesn't?" I asked.

Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always...well, sometimes they don't care about us. They ignore us."

I thought about some of the kids I'd seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. I'd known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn't have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave better.

"So we're stuck here," I said. "That's it? For the rest of our lives?"

"It depends," Annabeth said. "Some campers only stay the summer. If you're a child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you're probably not a real powerful force."

"I'm sure they'd appreciate that description," I mumbled sarcastically. Annabeth seemed to ignore me.

"The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it's too dangerous to leave. We're year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they'll ignore us until we're old enough to cause trouble — about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you'd know them. Some don't even realise they're demigods. But very, very few are like that."

"So monsters can't get in here?"

Annabeth shook her head. "Not unless they're intentionally stocked in the woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside."

"Why would anybody want to summon a monster?" Percy said.

"Practice fights. Practical jokes."

"Practical jokes?" I spluttered.

"The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry farm."

There was a long silence. I stared out at the hill, up at where the lone pine tree stood.

"So...you're a year-rounder?" Percy asked.

Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke's, except Annabeth's also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.

"I've been here since I was seven," she said. "Every August, on the last day of summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I've been here longer than most of the counselors, and they're all in college."

"Why did you come so young?"

She twisted the ring on her necklace. "None of your business."

"Oh." We stood there for a minute in another uncomfortable silence.

Percy asked, "So...we could just walk out of here right now if I wanted to?"

"It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr D's or Chiron's permission. But they wouldn't give permission until the end of the summer session unless..."

I leaned forwards. "Unless?"

"You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time…"

Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn't gone well.

"Back in the sick room," I started cautiously, "when Draco were feeding me that stuff—"

"Ambrosia."

"Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice."

Annabeth's shoulders tensed. "So you _do _know some thing?"

"Well...no. Back at our old school, Percy and I overheard Grover and Chiron talking about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn't have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?"

She clenched her fists.

"I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but they won't tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last time I was there, everything seemed so _normal_."

"You've been to Olympus?"

"Some of us year-rounders — Luke, Clarisse, myself and a few others — we took a field trip during winter solstice. That's when the gods have their big annual council."

"But...how did you get there?"

"The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor." She looked at me like she was sure I must know this already. You _are _a New Yorker, right?"

"Oh, sure." Percy said.

At the same time, I said, "No. I'm English."

"Explains the accent. Some people around camp you'll find come from England. Draco and Ginny, for example."

I frowned. How many other people were going to somehow recognise me?

Then I thought back to what Annabeth had been talking about. As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the Empire State Building (useless USA trivia lessons came in handy occasionally), but I decided not to point that out.

"Right after we visited," Annabeth continued, "the weather got weird, as if the gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I've overheard satyrs talking. The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn't returned by summer solstice, there's going to be trouble. When you guys came, I was hoping...I mean — Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for Ares. And of course she's got the rivalry with Poseidon. But, I mean, aside from that, I thought we could work together. I thought you two might know something."

I shook my head. I wanted to help her, despite the fact that all she'd done was annoy me for the past half hour, but I felt too hungry and tired and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.

"I've got to get a quest," Annabeth muttered to herself. "I'm _not _too young. If they would just tell me the problem…"

I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must've heard my stomach growl. She told us to go on, she'd catch us later.

In turn, I told Percy to go ahead of me. There was something that had been nagging me since I'd met Draco.

I turned back to her. "Annabeth?"

"Hm?" she was running her fingers across the metal bar of the pier distractedly.

"There was something I wanted to ask you."

"You mean about all the people who've recognised you?"

"How did you-"

"I saw it too." she sighed and turned to face me. "I have no idea, Hermione. You think you know someone, but...when I was going to cabin eleven with Draco, he was muttering under his breath; things like: 'oh gods, now I get what she meant,' and 'when's she gonna find out?'."

I frowned.

"The best idea is to discreetly wheedle information out of them." she straightened. "I'll try and get something out of Draco. If I were you, I'd try talking to one of his best friends. He's in a 'clique'-" she made air quotations, "-and one of them's in Hermes. Talk to Daphne Greengrass. She might be able to help."

I thanked her quickly and left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan.

On the way back to cabin eleven, I saw a group of people walking across the basketball pitch. They looked to be an assortment of people from the different cabins, and they had two adults with them - in fact, they were the only two adults I had seen in the entire camp. Could it really be _that_ dangerous to be outside camp that the entire generation of older demigods was gone? Anyway, all of the group wore orange T-shirts with the words Camp Half-Blood emblazoned on them. Within the group, I could see Ginny and Draco.

One boy, with harvest-crop coloured hair and leaf green eyes, looked towards me and broke away from the group. His friends looked at him worriedly, poised to run after him, but let him be and continued walking.

The boy reached me and slowed, walking with me towards cabin eleven. I could see Percy ahead, but made no move to run to him.

"So you're one of the new campers?" he asked, a friendly smile upon his face.

"Hermione Granger." I said warily. He had that same look of recognition in his eyes. I held out my hand, which he shook.

"Neville Longbottom. Demeter cabin." he pointed across the green towards one with the roof made of grass.

I crossed my fingers for luck. "Do we...know each other?"

His eyes flashed with fear for a second, like scared prey. "N-no. Of course not." he laughed nervously. "What makes you think that?"

"You've got that look in your eye."

"What look?"

"_That_ look. _Recognition_. You've got it. Ginny's got it. So has Draco. Annabeth noticed it too."

Neville swore lightly under his breath, looking away towards the cabins closer to the front of the U shape. He glanced back at me, and I couldn't understand his expression - it was a mix of so many feelings. But I gleaned one. _Pity_.

"Listen, Hermione..." he put his hand on my arm. "You'll understand everything really soon. I promise. But right now, I have to beg you not to ask any questions. Please?"

I nodded slowly, the cogs in my brain turning faster than ever before, but still reaching nowhere.

I looked behind him, and saw that the two adults were walking over to us. The rest of _The Group_ were continuing on, but I could tell they were trying not to look back.

The two adults arrived and I stopped to greet them. The man was a greasy-looking guy - literally; his black hair was slimy and plastered to his sallow face. He had a hook-nose and blackish eyes. The woman had long blond hair with a few grey streaks, which she held up in a bun, and piercing grey eyes.

"Hi," I held out my hand. They both shook it warmly, but I had to try not to wipe my hand on the grass after the guy. "I'm Hermione Granger."

The guy's lip curled in a sort of sneer, but I decided not to question it. The woman said, "I know, my dear. You and your friend caused quite a commotion when you arrived. I congratulate you on your defeat of the minotaur. I'm Minerva - but please call me Minnie. And this is Severus." the guy just sneered again.

"Anyway, we'd better get going - right?" Neville's unsubtle hint wasn't missed by anyone. "We've got to get ready for dinner." The three of them started to leave, but I caught Neville's arm before he could go. He motioned for the two adults to go on.

"Tell me one thing. Do you know me?" Neville was silent for a moment. "Please, Neville. I may have only just met you - as far as I know - but you can at least give me this."

"Yes." he finally told me. Then he waved to me, his happier mood replacing the grim one, and began to jog back to his group.

I cursed. Why did everything have to be so complicated? I ran to catch up with Percy. "Hey." I sighed, falling into step with him.

"What's got you in knots?" he inquired.

"Oh nothing." I waved him off. "Race you to the cabin?" Not giving him the chance to reply, I ran off in that direction. A few seconds later, he caught up. I could tell from his face that I hadn't thrown him completely.

When we got there, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers. Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to either of us as we walked over to my spot on the floor. I sat down heavily next to Percy.

The counselor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.

"Found you both sleeping bags," he said. "And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store."

I couldn't tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.

"Thanks." Percy and I both said.

"No prob." Luke sat next to us, pushing his back against the wall. "Tough first day?"

"I don't belong here," I said.

"Neither of us even believe in gods." Percy added.

"Yeah," Luke said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn't get any easier."

The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.

"So your dad is Hermes?" I asked.

He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes."

"The wing-footed messenger guy?" Percy asked.

"That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."

I figured Luke didn't mean to call us nobodies. He just had a lot on his mind.

"You ever meet your dad?" I asked.

"Once."

I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell us, he'd tell us. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had any thing to do with how he got his scar.

Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, guys. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other."

He seemed to understand how lost we felt, and I was grateful for that, because an older guy like him — even if he was a counselor — should've steered clear of 'un-cool' middle-schoolers like us. But Luke had welcomed us into the cabin. He'd even stolen us some toiletries, which was probably the nicest thing anybody had done for either of us all day.

I decided to ask him my last big question, the second of two that had been bothering me all afternoon. "Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about us being 'Big Three' material. Then Annabeth...twice, she said we might be 'the ones.' She said we should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?"

Luke folded his knife. "I hate prophecies."

"What do you mean?" Percy leaned forwards.

His face twitched around the scar. "Let's just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests. Annabeth's been dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He'd had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn't tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn't destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until...somebody special came to the camp."

"Somebody special?"

"Don't worry about it, guys," Luke said. "Annabeth wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for. Now, come on, it's dinnertime."

The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a conch shell, even though I'd never heard one before.

Luke yelled, "Eleven, fall in!"

The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. We lined up in order of seniority, so of course Percy and I were right at the back. Campers came from the other cabins, too, except for the two empty cabins at the end, and Cabin Eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.

We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods — and when I say out of the woods, I mean _straight _out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill.

In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads.

At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven's was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to the edge of a bench, but Percy was almost falling off.

Luke sat across from us, smiling in a friendly manner, whilst a girl with sandy hair and blue eyes - like most of the Hermes cabin - sat beside me.

I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr D, a few satyrs, and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur.

Annabeth and Draco sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her grey eyes and honey-blond hair.

Clarisse sat behind me at Ares's table. She'd apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.

Looking over to the Zeus table, I saw Ginny sitting on her own, looking pretty depressed, and I realised what Chiron had meant. The reason there were empty cabins was because those gods hadn't had any children in a while. That left her on her own. But in all the myths, most of the heroes had been sons of Zeus. What could have changed?

Ginny saw me looking and smirked, waving. She was being a lot more social than earlier. I waved back.

Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!"

Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!"

Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but the girl next to me said, "Speak to it. Whatever you want — nonalcoholic, of course." She smiled as I frowned sceptically. "Everyone's like there at first, but this place really is _magic_."

"I'm Daphne Greengrass." she introduced. I nodded, trying not to show my surprise. I studied her again. She was about thirteen - the same year as me, but my birthday was late in the school year. Her Camp Half-Blood T-shirt was cut at the sleeves, making it into a strap top, and the lines looked ragged, as if it had been done with a knife. Her jeans bulged at the pocket, and I pitied the people who she'd stolen from. Her father was Hermes, after all.

"No need to introduce me, I suppose." I decided. "New girl and everything."

"Hermione, really, there's nothing wrong with being new. I know you probably feel like you don't fit in here. I felt the same way when they told me who I was - I had both of my parents - like you, right?. But I learned to accept it. The world's a strange, unexplainable place, after all."

Her words brought back pangs of pain. I managed a weak smile, though.

I looked at the glass suspiciously. "Vanilla Coke."

The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.

Then I had an idea. "_Green _Vanilla Coke." The soda turned a violent shade of magenta.

I took a cautious sip. Perfect.

I drank a toast to my parents and Sally. I glanced over at Percy, who was drinking a cobalt coloured, cherry-smelling drink.

_They're not gone_, I told myself. _Not permanently, anyway. They're in the Underworld. And if that's a real place, then someday..._

"Here you go, Hermione," Daphne said, handing me a platter of assorted cheese. She was staring at my Coke strangely - probably at the colour. Then she turned to her glass and asked for pumpkin juice, which sounded utterly gross.

I loaded my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the centre of the pavilion.

"Come on," Daphne told me.

As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.

Luke murmured in my ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell." He and Percy had come up behind me and Daphne.

"You're kidding."

His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn't help wondering why any immortal, all-powerful beings would like the smell of burning food.

Daphne and Luke approached the fire, bowed their heads, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes and a slice of smoked brisket. They both muttered, "Hermes."

I was next. I wished I knew what god's name to say.

Finally, I made a silent plea. _Whoever you are, tell me. Please. _I scraped a big slice of cheddar into the flames.

When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn't gag. It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, cheese burgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn't have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke.

When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.

Mr D got up with a huge sigh. "Yes, I suppose I'd better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels."

A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.

"Personally," Mr D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have two new campers today. Helen Greener and Peter Johnson."

Chiron murmured something.

"Er, Hermione Granger and Percy Jackson," Mr D corrected. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that."

"Before you go to the campfire," Chiron interrupted, "I have an announcement of a more serious matter to make." I glanced at Ginny, then at the table for cabin four - which I realised Neville sat at. "Last Saturday - on her way to camp - Hannah Abbott, a daughter of Demeter, went missing." There was a ripple of gasps throughout the pavilion. "Her last known whereabouts was somewhere in New York, although it is believed that she was given a task by her mother before she left for camp. No one is able to contact her. If anyone knows anything, I implore you to step forwards."

The mood was much more subdued than it had been a couple of minutes earlier.

Mr D cleared his throat. "Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on."

Everybody cheered. With the missing girl quite forgotten, we all headed down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo's cabin led a sing-along. The nine year old girl from before had disappeared. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate smores and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn't feel that anyone was staring at me anymore. I felt that I was home.

Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn't realise how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping bag next to Percy.

My fingers curled around the Minotaur's horn. I thought about my parents, but I had good thoughts: my mother's smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was small whilst my dad looked on, pretending to frown at the ridiculously childish things we were reading. The way they would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite.

When I closed my eyes, the image of them smiling seemed to be printed on my eyelids.

After a while, the ghosted memories began to turn sour. I remembered their terrified shouts as they told me to run, their tortured faces, the gold dust that was all that left of them when the minotaur squeezed them into nonexistence.

I sat bolt upright, shivering. Cabin eleven was too crowded. It was too cold. The shadows cast on the wall moved eerily, and the breathing of twenty different people echoed loudly off the walls. Checking to make sure that everyone was asleep, even Percy, I balled up my sleeping bag, grabbed the minotaur horn, and walked out.

I knew it was against the rules to be out of after curfew, but to be honest I didn't care much. I made my way over to the campfire, which I had deducted was probably made of some sort of everlasting flame. It reflected the mood of the people within. As soon as I stepped over the threshold, the flames turned dark purple like bruises, but it stayed at a moderate height.

Sitting at the fire, poking it with a long bronze stick, was the nine year old girl I had seen before. She wore a simple brown shift with long sleeves, the kind I thought a monk would wear, but more...dress-like. She had long straight brown hair that reached just below her shoulders, and it seemed to glisten like a million diamonds in the light.

When the flame changed, she looked towards me and smiled. Warmth washed over me. Now that I could see her eyes, I looked into them. They were flames. I don't mean they reflected the firelight - they were literally two balls of fire in the place where her eyes should be. But it wasn't a sinister fire, it was a hearth-like one.

She beckoned me over. As I came closer her eyes changed, morphing into normal ones with flickering red-brown irises.

I figured there was only one thing she could be.

"Are you a goddess?" I asked bluntly as I sat down beside her, my sleeping bag lying over me.

Her laughter was like that of a small, elated child. "Why, yes, Hermione Granger. I am Hestia, goddess of home and the hearth. Not many stop to speak to me. You are the first in a while, but my visitors seem to have become more frequent."

I couldn't be bothered to ask her what she meant. "Can I stay here for the night? The Hermes cabin is too crowded."

"Of course. Home is where the hearth is, and I would not wish for anyone to have to stay somewhere where they do not feel at home with. I will watch over you."

I closed my eyes, and sleep claimed me almost immediately.

That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood.

I wish I'd known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.

**Just to warn you, there will be a severe dislike between Annabeth and Hermione for a while! :)**

**ϟ ϟ ϟ**

**Okay guys. So I recently noticed that this story has been filed under a Copyright Infringement Community because of the overall plot and the writing. So to make this story as legit as possible, I will be rewriting the chapters as I go along (basically I will update with the old chapter eight, then the updated chapter one, and so on). There isn't much I can do to change the plot line any more than I already planned to (it does deviate a bit as you go on though). I will also leave a disclaimer in all of the coming chapters.  
**

**-Rebecca**


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